Press Releases

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — fusionZONE Automotive, (fusionZONE), a leader in digital marketing technologies for automotive dealers and OEMs, announced an investment by Primus Capital, a private equity firm based in Cleveland and Atlanta. The funding will be used to grow market share, invest in product development and expand services for new and existing clients.

Since its inception in 2009, fusionZONE has been on the cutting edge of web design and conversion technologies, enabling dealers to reach their customers faster and connect with them in real-time, driving higher engagement and ultimately, sales. fusionZONE’s responsive and mobile-optimized platform, its emphasis on site speed and its innovative lead-generation and lead-management tools such as FastRing and FastPrice have led to dramatic growth over the past several years. Additional fusionZONE offerings enable dealers to optimize their digital marketing spend across online channels, in harmony with their overall web presence.

“The automotive industry is experiencing rapid change due to evolving consumer behavior, which has led to an acceleration in digital investments,” said Brett Sutherlin, CEO and co-founder of fusionZONE. “This funding will enable us to fuel strategic initiatives, capture new product opportunities, deepen our relationships with OEMs, and continue our excellent customer service.” Added Karen Sutherlin, COO and co-founder of fusionZONE, “Primus’ track record of success with SaaS companies, and in particular its experience in the automotive technology space, will be extremely valuable in further scaling our business over time. We are very excited to have them as a partner in our next phase of growth.”

“Beyond a couple large names, the digital marketing technologies used by auto dealers are highly fragmented. We believe that fusionZONE is poised to be the next important company in the space given their ability to effectively engage with consumers where and when they shop, across any size of dealer, OEM, or geography. The client feedback on this company has been superlative,” said Ron Hess, Managing Director of Primus. Vasant Kamath, Principal of Primus, added, “fusionZONE’s award-winning product capabilities and industry-leading conversion rates separate it from the other vendors in the space. We are confident that this partnership will increase the company’s market share and further benefit its dealer clients.” As part of the recapitalization, Hess and Kamath will join the fusionZONE board of directors, as will long time automotive industry executive Steve Greenfield, who was formerly the Vice President of Product Development and Vice President of Business Development at AutoTrader.com.

Portico Capital Securities LLC acted as the exclusive financial advisor to fusionZONE for this transaction.

PCG is pleased to announce that fusionZONE has won a 2017 Automotive Website Award for their Website Platform.

fusionZONE Automotive’s third generation fully-responsive, secure websites are built to fully maximize the consumers’ shopping experience by incorporating UX/UI design, paired with consumer behavior analytics tools on both mobile and desktop devices. Their websites are fast, HTTP-secured, and one of the highest performing, converting websites in the industry.

“By far the most comprehensive, best-performing, customer focused digital company out there. We utilize them for multiple tools and the results we’ve achieved are astounding,” commented John Marazzi of Brandon Honda and Sun Toyota. “Lots of digital companies give a great sales pitch and promise results. Very few actually deliver.”

The research on automotive website providers is conducted both from vendor demonstrations of their technology and independent testing by PCG of automotive website platforms.

We applaud fuzionZONE taking home a 2017 Automotive Website Award, and thank them for their continued innovation in this category.

For more information about all the winners of the AWAs, please visit http://www.awa.autos.

fusionZONE Automotive dealers attract more shoppers to their websites, convert more traffic to leads, and connect with more customers instantly by phone using unique technology solutions only available to fusionZONE Automotive clients.

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fusionZONE Automotive was chosen by Toyota to be part of the Toyota Dealer Digital Solutions (TDDS) Dealer Website Program (DWP) as a participating website provider.

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fusionZONE Automotive dealers have access to unlimited website options to dominate their market and surrounding PMA's, including Service and Parts Department sites, Spanish sites with tremendous SEO value on Latino Google, Special Finance and Credit sites, Military sites, City sites, and much more.

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fusionZONE Automotive currently manages the SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Pay Per Click campaigns on more than 4,000 dealer websites, micro sites, and landing pages in the U.S. and Canada; digital marketing services so comprehensive and effective that dealers are able to produce results several hundred times more than the dealer's prior provider, while saving most dealers thousands of marketing dollars in vendor costs.

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